“I should have killed Nicole,” I said flatly.
“No,” he said. “She was unarmed.”
“And look what we’re dealing with now.”
When Nicole Knox realized we had evidence implicating her son, she’d had his men run us off the road. She’d wanted James alive—long enough to question him before she killed him. We’d figured she probably just wanted me dead.
The crash had left him with a concussion and unable to run, let alone shoot a gun.
When they advanced on us that night, I did what I had to do.
I’d killed nearly a dozen men, but they’d still kidnapped James and taken him to a warehouse.
I’d tracked them down and found him tied to a chair, Nicole seconds away from pulling the trigger.
I took out the guards, who were doing a piss-poor job of protecting her, and then shot Nicole in the arm to keep her from killing James. I’d been ready to kill her after she admitted what she’d done to my mother, but James had talked me out of it. He’d insisted I’d regret killing an unarmed woman.
Only now, I regretted letting her go.
Sure, Gerald would still be after us if I’d killed his mother, but at least I would’ve had justice. It would have made it a little easier to bear with our current situation?—
James was recovering from a concussion, and we were hopping around the state, trying to stay hidden until I was sure James could hit the broadside of a barn with a handgun.
James’s gaze softened, an expression I was still getting used to. “You did the right thing.”
“You would have shot her,” I said matter-of-factly.
His eyes clouded. “That’s me. We’re talking about you.”
I let out a harsh laugh. “I’m not Detective Harper Adams anymore. I don’t follow the rules she was so obsessed with.”
He slowly shook his head. “You’re still more her than you want to admit.” He grimaced.
“You shouldn’t be moving your head. You’re impeding your recovery.”
James snorted. “It’s nothing. I’ve had a helluva lot worse.”
Yet, he wasn’t arguing with me that he wasn’t a hundred percent. And he sure as hell wasn’t ready to go on the offensive.
Concussions were tricky things. James had admitted this wasn’t his first—or even his fifth—which probably explained its massive impact. Each concussion made the next one harder to recover from. We’d hoped he’d be better by now, but his progress had been slow. His double vision had disappeared a couple of days ago, but he was easily tired and had persistent headaches.
It felt like we didn’t have any time to lose. The Knoxes were hot on our tails, and it would boil down to us or them.
It made total sense to try to find them, only James said Gerald Knox was notoriously secretive about where he lived—or even did business. Which had proved to be true after I’d taken advantage of my private detective license access and spent the last week trying to find anything about his location.
There was nothing.
He had a bank account, no loans, and supposedly no property. But I also knew that property could be hidden by corporations, which I suspected to be the case here. Especially since there was evidence of Gerald Knox selling a Little Rock warehouse under a corporation and that same corporation had recently been dissolved.
James was certain Gerald Knox was the man in charge of the trafficking ring, but I couldn’t find anything to tie him to it.
James was also certain that whoever was in charge of the trafficking ring had been doing it for a while. At least three years, based on the fact that James had insinuated he’d worked out a deal with the Feds where he’d have his charges dropped from a previous case if he helped them bring the ring down.
Which meant the ring had been in operation a while. And he’d been running it while I was a homicide detective. The thought lit something cold and furious in my chest.
If Gerald Knox was selling people, then I needed to catch him. I needed to stop him.
And even if he wasn’t, I needed him and his mother to pay for what they’d done to my mother.
